Mastering attention

Where is your attention?

See, for most people attention is not a conscious attribute of their experience. Attention is placed on whatever happens right now. And when whatever happens right now is what catches your attention, you are at the whim of whatever you think that is.

But here is what is happening right now. Everything.

Everything is happening right now. There is someone being shot, and there is an act of kindness. There is nature destroyed, and there is someone who plants trees. There is the client who said no, and there is the client who said yes.

Everything is happening right now.

Yet when we are in the automatic way of being, we are at the effect of what we think happens right now. Then when there is horrible news, we are at the effect of this news. When we have pain, we are at the effect of this pain.

But that is an illusion.

You are never not capable of changing what you put your attention on. Never.

There is a story of a monk, a friend of the Dalai Lama, who was thrown into prison for 15 years, being badly treated and abused. When he came out of prison and talked to the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama asked him, “How have you been, my friend? How did you experience being in prison?” To which the monk replied, “Oh, it was a real challenge. In these 15 years I had two moments in which I fell out of love with my prison guards.”

What I take from this story is that he would have had plenty of reasons to be out of love for these 15 years straight, but this wasn’t where he had his attention.

You might not have a say about what happens in the world, to you, if the client says yes or no, but you have a say over what thoughts you grant your attention.

Attention creates your experience, but only always.

Mastering your attention, your way of being, and the practice to have a say about it is one of the pillars of our 1-year-long training, “Mastering the Art of Leadership & Self Expression.”